Dive Brief:

• The Intercept—​the online publication of First Look Media created and funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar to further the work of Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Edward Snowden—reported last week that the Mall of America set up a fake Facebook account to obtain information and photos of Black Lives Matter protestors, a process known as “catfishing.” 

• The protestors had been organizing against police brutality for a December event at the Bloomington, MN-based mall, and the publication obtained documents of the mall’s security team.

• The mall, which is seeking damages related to the December event, has so far declined to comment on this story, but the Facebook page was taken down after The Intercept contacted them.

Dive Insight:

The Intercept is reporting credible information that the security team at the Mall of America, right now the country’s largest, most experience-laden mall, catfished protestors — used a fictional online person to obtain their photos and personal information — as they prepared to stage their event. 

As major American gathering places, malls can be particularly vulnerable to terror threats, and the Mall of America is particularly prepared for that, with its own private counter-terrorism unit, Risk Assessment and Mitigation. But this kind of privacy intrusion is the kind of the thing that could drive shoppers away, just at the time when many retailers and malls aim to use technology like beacons to connect with shoppers.

“'The place for fun in your life' is the Mall of America’s slogan, which doesn’t align with the Mall creating a fake Facebook account to stalk activists,” says web engineer and security advocate Tony Webster, who initially obtained much of the evidence of the mall’s intrusions. “It doesn’t align with my memories of a fun place to go as a kid. I’m sympathetic to the Mall’s everyday task of ensuring safety, but this violation of privacy went too far, as did Mall management’s pushing for harsh criminal prosecution of peaceful demonstrators.”